


Passages

by orphan_account



Category: Devilman
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1995-10-17
Updated: 1995-11-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 12:03:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3691593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryo, his childhood, and his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Parts 1-5

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is rescued from internet-oblivion thanks to the Wayback Machine. [The original page is here.](https://web.archive.org/web/19991002144536/http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Garden/3917/louis.html) Original author's note:
> 
> Copyright © October 17th-November 8th, 1995 Team Bonet. Devilman and all of its possessed and semi-possessed characters are © 1973 Go Nagai. But we could be wrong about the date, so don't quote us on that, eh? Thanks for reading, y'all!

**Part I Unable to Remember**

Looking back now, my childhood seems unreal. I can never really remember things happening to me. Whenever I try to remember, all I can evoke are vivid pictures of a wall corner, a door handle, a floor board. People come to me as the edges of skirts and the folds of pants. I can't see their faces, because they look as if someone has erased them, and their voices are an indecipherable babble.

Sometimes, when I lie awake at night, I hear the wing moving through the forest, and i think I can make out words, that I can finally remember something in my past. But when I try to put the words into a coherent pattern, I can't remember them anymore. Very soon, my past seemed like a photograph, and photographs seemed unreal.

I'd stare at the faces looking back at me from family rooms and warm, summer beaches, and Mother would tell me it was your Uncle Himito and Aunt Atami. But I could never quite believe those smiling people really existed. I harvored an odd idea that maybe they were trapped in there. That's why I was scared when I first saw myself in a photo. I was sitting in the backyard, bundled up for Christmas, and holding up John when he was just a puppy. _But that isn't me,_ I'd think. Once, I clawed at the picture, to see if something, anything, would come out of it. Nothing did. But I never trusted pictures since then. Pictures were unreal.

Maybe my inability to remember was a blessing for me, though. Because, even till this very day, I can't remember the last time I saw my Mother.

Most of what I can remember is the way the light from the street lamps reflected on the car's metal buckles. We were driving to the airport, I think, because Father and Mother were leaving for Mexico. Father must have been very excited. I don't know this because I can remember his words, or any pictures of his excitement, but only because even today he gets excited over Mexico, and it's plausible that he would have been thrilled upon first visiting it. I wasn't very excited. Mostly, I was annoyed because I had recently gotten a new pair of boots, and I knew they'd drop me off at the Fudo's, and the Fudo's would keep me inside all day, eating muzumi balls.

The boots were a sort of pride for me. I had never been permitted to buy my own shoes before. I spent a complacent four years not knowing what I wore, and a fifth birthday in tight black shoes Mom seemed to replace at the precise moment when I had reached a bond of understanding with the pair. So when on my sixth birthday Father let me chose my own shoes, I had been thrilled. I quickly picked out a pair of white boots held together by a miraid of buckles. The streets lamps zooming by reflected off those buckles, and I spent an enjoyable ride just staring at them and turning my foot over and over.

I realized later that I should have been looking at Mother. I should have been listening to her jokes, watching the way the edges of her hair were dyed red in the darkness, illuminated by the lights coming from the car's radio. I should have gazed at her with childish love as she toyed with the rings in her hand, memorizing her laugh and the way she'd moved. Instead, I had been staring at a pair of white boots which are now hidden, rusting away in some closet.

Even at the airport, I never realized how important that moment would be. I'd gone to the airport many times before, and I'd never stayed near my parents. I always ran to watch the bags give rounds in the baggage claim, or to stare up at the huge signs that read: Terminal A Bag Claim Terminal C Gate 18. Mom's hand was like a steady pressure one got used to in time. I wish to God I had looked up that night, at least once.

I cannot even remember what she said to me as she messed with my clothes and hair before following Father into the plane. I think she waved. She must have waved. The Fudo's had come to get me at the airport, and they were messing up my dress as well. It seemed that I always dressed wrong. I was annoyed at them. I was trying to wave under a torrent of gloved hands and yanks at my sleeves, and starring at a cockroach in mute fascination.

Somehow, that's what I can remember with most detail from that day. The cockroach. That little copper-coloured thing climbing the gate wall, clicking its velvety wings, waving its thin antennas in a slow, hypnotic dance. I stared at it for a long time, entranced by the hard body, the gleaming thorax, the veined, pulsing wings, flapping spasmodically as it twirled its eyes... That fucking cockroach. The only thing I remember from a day I should have treasured, and observed, held on to so that I could call it my last memory of my Mother. The day when I saw her last, that day when she last woke me up, and held me, and pinched my nose...

But I did not live that day. I let it pass through me in a torrent of lights, baggage, tiled floors, pants. And a cockroach on a wall.

**Part II Reality-1961**

"No! No, John, get away from there!"

I laughed uncontrollably as i watched my best friend, Akira Fudo, rub towards my dog, John, who was about to dive into the Fudo's prize bird bath, a dainty contraption of glazed terracotta perching imperiously on the lawn. Akira grabbed John's collar and began to pull frantically, burrowing his feet into the yard's mud for balance.

I had spent most of my childhood with the Fudos. Although Mister and Mrs.Fudo were also archaeologists, and had collaborated in many projects with my parents, they didn't travel as much as mine did. They worked in the local museum, and sometimes they would take Akira and me with them. We had met, in fact, in the museum's main office, one day when Akira had rushed in, tripped, and tipped a base over. We must have been about four or five, but, for some reason I could never understand, not even years later, we had a certain empathy between us. It was as if being friends came natural to us, as if it were our destinies.

We went to school together since the primary years. We'd copy each other's assignments, mostly mine, by the way. We lied for each other, and shared our lunches. Unless, of course, Akira brought muzumi, in which case I blatantly refused any of it. He was my best friend. And whenever Mom and Dad would leave, I would be glad to be here with Akira. I never told him any of these things, though.

"Hit him over the head," I called out to him now.

I was sprawled on the front porch, affecting a pose of unconcerned spectator. Turning the pages of the anime magazine we had been reading slowly and drowsily, I pretended not to care when Akira yowled and cursed at John. Pretty soon, he became aware of what I was doing and began to curse and shout at me too.

"Animal! You did this on purpose! I saw you kick John while you were reading, and don't you deny it!"

" _Bakana._ Why would I want to destroy your bird bath?"

"You're not helping me out here! That's pretty big evidence that you want me to suffer at the hands of your dog!"

"Ok. All right, all right. Hold on, I'm coming to your aid, O Intrepid Fudo Akira."

With a battle cry, I leaped down from the porch and towards John. I took off my coat as I advanced and waved it above me in circles.

"Come on, boy. Come on," I called, "get the coat."

John turned around from his grip on the bird bath and stared at my hand for a while. I kept spinning the coat till I was sure he was completely absorbed by it. Once he was, and he had crouched down on the ground, salivating and ready for a new game, I released the coat. John tore after it in a flash, jumping over rose beds and blue and green lawn chairs.

"That dog hates me," Akira pouted. I smiled and punched his arm. Akira rubbed it and stuck his tongue out at me. I stuck mine out right back. Akira kicked me, and so I kicked him as well. Then he lunged forward and knocked me to the ground. I brought my knees up and sent him rolling. Pretty soon, we were scuffling all over the yard, while John barked and ran around us in excitement.

A few minutes later, we let ourselves fall onto the grass. Akira spread his arms out wide, and I could see his breathing was deep and exhausted. Beads of sweat lined his face, but he was smiling. I folded my hands under my head and watched the white clouds race by. It was a perfectly wonderful day. I sighed in content.

Akira lifted himself up, propping himself on one shoulder. "Penny for your thoughts," he said.

"Nothing, really," I answered, watching a turtle shaped cloud crash into a fluffy dragon.

"Not so!" Akira said in a sing-song voice. I frowned at him in mock anger and growled at him to stop being such a pest. He just gave me an impish smile and began to sing-song even louder.

"I know what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking."

I tried to cover my ears as he began to skip like a moron around me, aware of just how moronic he looked and how much it annoyed me. I shouted at him to grow up, to shut up, and to take a speedy trip to Hell, but he didn't stop singing till I bellowed out:

"All right! Enough! You know what I'm thinking. So what is it?!"

Akira stopped skipping and squatted down in front of my face. He threw a mock punch at my nose and giggled. I wanted to strangle him.

"Your parents return today."

I sighed and let my head fall back into the grass, turning on my back. I could hear Akira saying, in a superior tone of voice, how he knew he'd know what I was thinking. Beneath me, the grass tasted like mud and glue. I felt really foolish suddenly.

"Not that I missed them," I mumbled to Akira. I heard him begin to laugh. Then his laughter moved away from me, and I heard his steps on the porch. I heard him swing open his front door.

"Hey, Mom," he called, "Ryo says he doesn't miss his mommy, and I saw him circling today's date on the calendar yesterday. He's a liar. A liar, liar, liar."

His sing-song _liar liar_ charade disappeared into the house, and I heard the front door slam. When I figured enough time had gone by, I flipped over on the grass again. With my hands behind my head, I looked up at the sky once more.

I fancied I saw a plane up ahead.

**Part III Descent**

There was a crack in the ceiling of my bedroom. It began by the edge of the windows and spread out tired fingers towards the front of the closet. Diminutive fungi was forming around its edges, and little drops of water fell to the floor from where the crack squinted out into the sky. They formed an ochre puddle on the floor, urine yellow and sickening. I looked at those falling drops like a demented patient who has tired of struggling in his straight jacket and can only lay still, exhausted. One by one they fell, and one by one I saw them drop. _Drip drip drip._ I continued staring at them even when darkness came and I could no longer see them. I heard them. I heard them splashing down into their thickening puddle.

And I pretended I couldn't hear the people downstairs. The clink of glasses. The rasping of chairs. The murmured shit nobody really meant. I tried to shut it all off with the incessant dripping. And for a while, enveloped in darkness, feeling my bones become stiff and the mattress become grinding stone, I managed to block them out. I couldn't even hear their shiny autos leaving, although I saw the headlights rush to the corners of my room and hide by the door.

I lay in my bed perfectly still. Perfectly numb. Hearing the dripping water. I became lost in a train of idle thought that whistled in my ears. It came to a crashing stop with my drowning in a room full of water drips, still staring at the ceiling. My throat hurt so much, and it was becoming so hard to breathe, that for a moment I thought it was true. But it was only my nose full of mucus. _Maybe I'll die,_ I thought bleakly, _maybe I'll choke on my own saliva and acfixciate with my mucus... Maybe this stone bed will shatter my bones. Maybe that crack will give, and this whole house will bury me._

The door groaned then, and someone forced it open. A thin line of light ran forward and jumped into my curtains, wrapping itself around them.

A voice, a voice that sounded like my Father's, floated in after it. It warbled about being all right and seeing her and coming down and see you. I remained impervious to it. I didn't even stir. A wicked thought made itself into my pulsing brain, and I hoped the voice would think I had died too.

It went away then, and pulled the white light along with it. It clawed at the floor, until it squeezed under the door and was gone. But I didn't move. I just lay there, the echo of the spoken words becoming meaningless noise in the back of my head. I could feel small, wet larva begin to crawl along my legs. The stone bed had pulverized my hands, I could not feel them anymore. Moths began to dance inside my belly, their wings scrapping across its walls. A giant sloth was trying to come out my mouth, pushing itself out, bulging in my throat, slimy and pulsating. Salt crystallized in my eyes. I heard someone moan.

But I just stared at the drips falling to the floor. I lost myself in the little ochre drops, until I thought my eyes would burst, sprinkling salt over the bed.

It was then that the sloth emerged from my mouth, and I heard it scream. It was a horrible sound, helpless, maddening. And it rang in my ears long after it had faded away. The loneliest sound in the world.

**Part IV Sound and Fury-1969**

**Monday, 4:59am**

_And where have you been at this hour? It's almost 5 am for God's sake..._

_None of your business, old coot._

_Watch your tongue. Are you drunk?_

_Why should you care?_

_I'm your father!_

_Oh, ha ha. That's rich. You're hardly around... I was beginning to believe I had no father. Thank you for setting me straight. Now get outta my way._

_Where are you going?_

_To my room! To the Bathroom! Where I else? Shit, I've got this fucking headache, damn it all..._

_You're drunk. You're drunk, aren't you? Come back down here, young man. Let me see you!_

_Why don't you come up here? You rooted to the floor?_

_What's wrong with you? Son, what is it!?_

_You should know, Mr. National Geographic. You're so frigging smart, figure it the Hell out._

_Now wait a minute, young man. Don't you dare talk to me like that. I'm your father!_

_And little do I care..._

_Son? Son!? Come back here! Son!_

**Monday, 7:00am**

_Stop playing with your breakfast and eat it._

_I'll eat at the airport after you leave._

_You'll do no such thing. Eat up. And stop looking at me like that. I don't know what's happened to you lately. You're only fourteen and you're acting like a common slack. Either you shape up or I send you to boarding school._

_You wouldn't dare. Mother never wanted me to go there. Mother never made me do anything I didn't want._

_You were six years old back then. Now you're almost a man. You look more like a baby. Your mother would be ashamed._

_Yeah? Well Mom's not here now, is she, Pop? She's D.E.A.D. She's buried twenty feet underground and rotting._

_Stop that son. Eat._

_Larva are feasting on her putrid skin. Her eyes are masses of blown gunk resting on the rims of her sockets. Her skin's peeling off slowly, so slowly, in little green clumps of slimy muck, crawling with ants..._

_Son. Stop._

_...She's turning to dust even as we speak, falling apart in a heap of bones. Her blood has already flowed out into the cask. Her stomach's burst out of her mouth, pulsing and nauseous. A spider lives there now, buried in its bilis. Her bones are tearing out through her wasted skin, twisting in their sockets..._

_Stop it!_

_...She's dead Dad! She's dead because she went off to see some stupid Mayan mask. Because you're an arqueologist and she had to go with you because she was your loving assistant! And why couldn't I go!? Why could I never go!? I would have DIED too! And then I wouldn't have to live with you! A miserable excuse for a father. A horrible father! An invisible fucking idiot!!_

_STOP IT!_

_I hate you._

**Friday, 12 midnight**

_I knew I'd find you like this someday. Dead drunk. Look at yourself! Lying on that bed like an idiot. You don't even greet me when I come back. And for some odd reason, the car's out of the garage. I won't ask why until later. Now get up! Clean up this mess. This place looks like a pig-sty. And a fine pig you make, too._

_You're a disgrace, you know? Ever since your mother died you've done nothing but mope and rebel like some jerk. It's a miracle I haven't found any drugs yet. You probably don't bring them home, do you? You're an imbecile. Any other idiot would have gotten over his mother's death already. It's been seven years son! What's wrong with you!?_

_You're not the only one who's sad. What? Do you think I don't miss her!? I miss her every day of my life. But I've gone on with my life, and I've tried to make the best of this mess. And of you. But, oh no, you have to play the martyr! You've wasted seven years moping around, getting drunk, coming home late, and acting like a jerk. A real jerk, you know?_

_I'm ashamed of calling you my son. In fact, get up! Come on. Pack up all of your junk. Classes begin tomorrow at the state boarding school. If we go tomorrow, it won't be too hard to get you in, and get rid of you for once and for all. Maybe you'll shape up. Frankly, I don't care, as long as I don't have to see you again. Come on! Get up! I've had just about enough of your little charade--_

_It ends now._

**Part V Dreaming Awake-1970**

I leaned against a wall for support. My throat was hurting again and, try as I might, the burning of salt wouldn't leave my eyes. I took several deep breaths and thought savagely at my throat that either it calmed down or I ripped it out. It obeyed me reluctantly, but I managed to calm myself enough to continue on my way.

The voices around me sounded the same as all the voices had sounded in Fumeki College. Girls shouted and hurried by whispering, swinging their book bags and prim as anything in little blue sailor suits. Boys threw books across each others heads and called out dirty jokes, leaning against their lockers and battling against the high neck of the school uniform. Some had removed their jackets and were leaning over carefully tended flower arrangements, talking to pretty girls with pigtails and bows.

I missed Akira. In every shouted joke and nervous laugh, I thought I heard him. I'd look up then, and hope to see him. Then these hateful uniforms would be gone, and I'd be in Fumeki again. But that would never be. Sadly, I turned my eyes back to my boots. One foot in front of the other and white floors smelling of disinfectant. That was my world now.

It was by complete mistake that I made quite an impression in this school. I had arrived late for my first class. I ran down the unknown and much too orderly halls, completely disoriented without the living human tumult of Fumeki. My books were beginning to slip from my hands, and I had abandoned any attempts at actually buttoning my jacket's neck, so it hung loosely and limply over my shoulders and collarbone. It wasn't until I reached the classroom that I was aware of what a stir I was causing. There I was, blond, wild haired, blue eyed, with an open collar, breathing deeply and pausedly as the teacher admonished my tardiness, wrote out my name on the blackboard, and was greeted by a chorus of suppressed sighs and giggling on behalf of the girls. I was a bit bewildered. No one had thought much of me at Fumeki. Especially not the girls.

I didn't pay any attention to them, other than a stray look of immense puzzlement. They thought I was so wonderful, so cute, so cool, so sexy... It was beyond my grasp to see myself as any of those. I didn't see myself as much of anything.

So I became known as a cold heart-breaker. Girls regarded me with awe and hate and contempt and desire, while the boys held me as a complete jerk and entertained fantasies of my being homosexual. I quickly learned to care very little about any of them. I just kept to myself and stared at the floor. I never realized how completely conceited I appeared to everyone. But I learned to smirk and hide everything I felt that year.

I did reasonably good in class. I was so depressed thinking about Mom and my old life, that I dived into the comparatively safe haven of academics. But once the projects were done and the tests past I'd fall again into my reveries. I thought about _okaasan_ constantly, desperately trying to remember her, only to discover I could not evoke anything further than her dark silhouette at a door. I couldn't remember her voice, if she'd said something important to me. Nothing.

Once, I took a snapshot with me to school. One of the few personal belongings I had taken to boarding school with me was an old photo album, the one with all the snapshots of me and Akira and John. The photo I held in my hand was older. It was taken at a flower fair in 1959, or so the banner hung above us read. Mom wore a large, rice picking hat and a white kimono. She held a cherry blossom branch in her hand, and I was hugging her legs. I forced myself to remember that day. I tried so hard that my head began to hurt. A knot formed in my throat, and I put the photo to my cheek, hoping to feel _okaasan's_ kimono. The photo's edges scrapped against the crystallized salt around my eyes, and I could feel the hateful sloth battling to escape from my throat again. I swallowed hard. In an instant of blind rage I punched the wall. I heard my knuckles crack and the scrape left blood on the white wall, but it didn't seem real either.

I stared at the blood, red and wet on the concrete wall. Feel it, damn it, I thought. Life is real. Why don't you live?! I looked around me. Students were walking by me, staring at me. My brain felt numb. I scraped at the salt sticking to my cheeks. My chest hurt, a throbbing was beginning to lodge at the sides of my head, squeezing out my breaths, pounding till I couldn't stand it. I felt as if my heart would burst. Blindly I tore through the staring students. I had to get away. I couldn't bear their stares, the unreality of it all. I wanted to remember my Mother. I wanted to be six years old again.

The passages swirled around me. I heard someone laugh and mock me. I kept on. I felt the stairs slip by me and my fingers were numb on the handlebars. I almost tripped on the last step, the sharp contact of my knee bone with concrete shooting sparks under my eyelids, but I never stopped. I wanted to keep on running till my heart broke.

I was amazed when my body saved me. I collapsed in the empty soccer field and lay panting into the grass. Why whole body shook. It seemed forever before I picked myself up and leaned against the Gym wall for support. The white clouds rolled on, lazy and content, above me. The world moved on around me, mocking me with its bright sunlight and laughter. I closed my eyes, a sob escaping my lips.

It was like that for almost three months. But no one knew. The few who did thought I was just crazy. None of the teachers suspected something was wrong with me. Only one girl approached me one day while I ate my lunch.

"I saw you crying in the Gym yesterday," she said. She didn't sound mean, so I looked up at her. I was disappointed to see her blush, but I didn't tell her off. I merely shrugged.

"You're a strange kid," she said. "You must have horrible problems..."

I moved away as she sat near me. I turned my head away and tucked it a little so my bangs would cover my eyes from her.

"Would you like to tell me about it?"

I remained immobile for a while. She sounded so caring, so concerned. I was struck by a desire to tell her everything, about not remembering, about the sloth, the drips, my Father, everything. But as I looked at her pale green eyes, I knew I wouldn't.

I had become used to my pain. I realized that as I watched her leave sadly. I had been living for so long now with my self pity that I didn't know how to stop feeling sorry for myself. It was as if I had accepted the role of a depressed hero in some play. A tragedy where the hero was undone by his own depression. Years later, staring at what I would make of my best friend, at how I would tear apart all of his sheltered life, I would still be the actor willingly accepting the role of doomed hero.

That month, when the green eyed girl had approached me at lunch, that was the month I fainted clear away in the middle of a crowded hall, my head throbbing, the sloth biting into my trachea and blocking my breath, a warm drop of blood trickling down my chin.


	2. Parts 6-9

**Part VI Intensive**

My eyes open for a while. All I can see is white. They close again. I hear a steady beeping. A voice calls out for something, a medicament with a long, nonsensical name. I hear wheels scrape over linoleum floors and my stomach gyrates The moths are beating frantically at its walls. I feel their wings. Someone puts a cold metal against my chest and shouts out some words. Bright lights appear at the edges of my eyes. The salt crystals are forming over my lashes now. A hand reaches out to feel my throat. It grabs at the precise place where the sloth rests its head and my mouth opens to let it moan. Long strings of fishing wire are put into my veins and they begin to pull at them, till the pain simply becomes a pulsating red and the edges of my consciousness. Then a long metal splinter begins to tear at my skin, filling my body. I feel the moths panic as a thick liquid comes in. My stomach turns. The voices continue. The spasms of the drowning moth's wings are painful. Voices shout out a last command and the hands release.

All save one. One excerting a warm, even pressure in my fingers. A familiar hand holding on to mine. Unconsciously, I tighten my fingers around it, and suddenly the moths are still and the sloth settles down into the lower end of my lungs, quiet and almost invisible. My eyelids flutter weakly and the salt falls off in flakes. But I don't look around me yet. I give one last squeeze to the hand in mine, and let myself fall into deep sleep.

**Part VII Ascent**

I stirred. At that one, slight motion a baffling disorientation took a hold of me, and for a while I didn't know if I was at home or at the boarding school. The plastic whisper of the hospital sheets as I moved reminded me of where I was and I struggled to open my eyes. I heard the crinkling of salt as it fell in powdery sprinkles on the pillows.

A white ceiling, devoid of any crack or mark, was the first thing I saw. I groaned. My eyes stung and my throat felt swollen. Slowly, I began to feel the rest of my body, until I reached down into my hands and discovered that the warm pressure I had felt before was still there.

Turning my head slowly, reluctantly, with a bit of awe, I beheld my Father. It was his hand in mine. I looked at it, unable to believe in it. I felt the fingers, saw the nails, fine hair, wrinkles, wedding rings, but I could not believe it was really there, nestling around my own. It was a warm, loving hand. The man it belonged too was unkind, cruel, unfair, invisible. He had not cried for Mom and he had not thought twice about throwing me out. Why would he hold my hand with such love?

 I looked at him. It was almost as if I had just realized that I had a father. He was asleep and his chin rested on his chest, rising softly and evenly in slumber. His beard looked wild and unkept, his hair was uncombed. The jacket he wore was rumpled and soiled. He had forgotten to take off his glasses and they hung on his nose now, uselessly. The morning sun glistened in his hair, painting his lashes a golden red. His brows were knitted together in a look of pained concern. He had been crying, the tears leaving a shiny path down his cheeks and nose. I realized how lined his face was, how wrinkled, at that moment.

He looked pitiful; sad and pitiful. Like a lost child. As I looked at him, I felt an odd sensation in my heart. My breathing became paused and slow. It was almost painful. But I wasn't hurting. I was crying. I stared at his hand in mine, at the two shiny wedding rings, and I felt the tears fall onto the pillow and roll into my mouth. There was no salt in these tears, and my eyes didn't sting. Looking at my Father's hair cascading into his eyes, I suddenly felt relief. I was happy, and I didn't know why. I should have been angry. I should have taken away my hand. But I didn't.

My tears stopped flowing slowly. Dad never woke up. And I didn't want him to. I remained in bed, looking at him. Drinking him in and wondering why I hadn't stopped to look at him before. I was amazed, deep down in my heart, that I was happy. Just looking at him asleep made me happier than anything had in years. A smile stretched across my lips.

And I couldn't explain why.

**Part VIII Beside Conversations: Recovery**

A nurse propped up the last of the pillows. I felt her pounding at it in mute professionalism before she told me to lean back again. Once I was comfortably settled down, she injected an IB into my arm and wrote down a few words and digits on her clip pad.

"Don't hesitate to call if you need anything else," she said as she exited.

I sighed and lifted my arm. The IB needle itched. I had never been in a hospital before and all the green plastic was beginning to sicken me. Even the robe they wrapped me in was green. I let my head fall back against the pillows and let out a groan of bitter, heartfelt martyrdom. It felt so good, I did it again. Then again and again.

By the time I had satisfactorily found just the perfect groan, the door opened. A timid voice called my name. I lifted my head at the sound of that voice. It was _Tousan's_. Quickly, I settled into a calm pose, and once assured that my face was perfectly calm and cool, perfectly hiding any trace of feeling, I levelled my voice into a casual and almost rebellious:

"Come in."

I had been a rebel for almost twelve years, and old hatreds died slow. Even if I had cried for him, even if I had discovered him as a person, I found it hard to give him the complete satisfaction of seeing me smile at him. Not right then, and not there.

He came into the room slowly. Closing the door silently he came to sit by my bed. His discomfort was obvious in every line of his body and in every gesture he made. He remained fidgeting in the chair for a long time before he coughed and settled his already settled glasses. I felt an odd sense of pride well up inside me for having been able to make him so uncomfortable, but I kept my face impassive.

"Well, eh, son. I heard you had been hospitalized..."

"Obviously. Thank you for visiting me, sir."

He let himself fall back miserably into the chair.

"No, son! Not 'sir'... This isn't the way it was supposed to be. Look, I-I came to see if you were all right. Then I'll leave. I know you don't want to see me, so I'll leave quickly..."

My heart almost broke at those words, and once again I felt the salt clinging to my cheeks. But I forbade myself from showing any emotion. I looked down at the IB in my arm.

"Son. I'm... Look, I'm sorry I sent you away. This is all my fault. I wasn't there for you... And I never... I..."

I clutched the edge of my covers with my free hand. My knuckles shook, white with the effort to control the expression on my face. In an echo of my school persona I let my hair flow forward to obscure my eyes.

"Father," I said, my voice laced with anger, a measured anger, "you never even cried for her. And then you just kept travelling, you kept on with your work as if nothing. Didn't you ever realize how much I missed her?"

Father was quiet. My body shook. I felt that hateful sloth begin to uncoil in my lungs, and the moths beat their wings uselessly in the medicine mess that was my stomach. The blood in my head began to pound. The seconds it took me to stay there seemed like years, and I almost felt myself grow old.

A single tear dropped into my hand. I stared in shock at it. A single, rose coloured tear. Mutely, I saw my entire hand, then the plastic covers, fill with rose coloured tears. One by one they fell. I stared at them as if they had materialized out of nowhere and were not really mine. I continued staring at them, as in a trance, as I felt two strong arms take a hold of me and pull me close. I saw two little white tears fall into the tumult of my own.

Then, trembling, my hand rose. It groped over the bed covers and over clothing as it came to rest on my Father's back. I felt his embrace tighten and I heard his voice choke. I moaned and let my head fall into his chest. The tears were flowing freely now, down my cheeks, down his coat, onto the bed, into the floor.

"I cried, son," he choked. "I missed her so much. You remind me so much of her... I couldn't bear to see you. I was blind... I only wanted to forget her. I didn't mean to hurt you... I'm sorry... I didn't know, and I wanted to forget so much, to forget all the pain, that I didn't realize how you hurt... you never said anything... I was so blind..."

"No... Father. It's not your fault. I don't know... I just let myself harbour so much hate and pain... God, I couldn't even remember her, and I felt so horrible... and then I got used to the pain... I didn't know how to make it stop. I've hurt us both so much... shit... Oh, Father!"

With a sob, I buried my head deeper into his chest, feeling the warmth of his body against my own, praying that the darkness there would just take me. I felt his hand tighten against my back, his head resting against mine. I could hear him murmuring, but I could only catch one word.

"Son..."

We remained like that for a long time, just clasped onto each other's arms and releasing all the tears we had held inside for such a long time. Slowly, I felt my heart begin to ease and the pressure it had excerted began to unwind. I could feel Dad's body ease up too. His hand began to stroke my hair, and I just lay against his chest, crying like a baby and sobbing. It hurt to realize how long I had wanted this to happen.

I had found Father.

************

At twelve midnight of that day I awoke sweating in my bed. A violent tremor convulsed my body, and I began to feel nauseous. I sat up in bed and clutched my stomach. I felt the beads of sweat sprinkling on my hands. My head swam.

A strong pulsing was tearing through my throat, gurgling up from my stomach. The convulsions kept getting worse and worse. I shook and the bed rattled against the wall. I was finding it hard to breathe. I tried to scream, but I gagged. I spasmed forward and a thick clot of blood flowed out. I vomited when I realized that tiny, pulsing larva were sticking to the blood, wriggling out into the bed, leaving thin trails of blood and gore. I was nauseated by what I saw, the smells that rose out of the scarlet lump. I struggled out of bed, slipping on the blood and vomit, stepping on the larva. They died, cold and slimy, under my feet. The room was spinning. A shot of agonizing pain ran through every nerve in my body as I ripped out the IB in my struggle.

Then, in one last racking convulsion, I fell squatted to the ground. Blood flowed from my mouth, and in one, last spasm the sloth emerged, encrusted with still twitching moth wings, wriggling like a cut umbilical cord. I stared at it. I vomited one last time before I felt myself swoon to the side and everything went mercifully black.

**Part IX Remembering- 1971**

I let my hand into the cage and offered a pumpkin seed. The little canary chirped and snatched it away. I laughed and called it a glutton.

John raised his muzzle to growl at it, but then settled back down to sleep again. I kneeled down beside him and scratched his head. He whined softly and licked my hand.

"I missed you too, boy," I said, rubbing its back one last time before I got up again.

"Stop feeding that canary and help with these bags!" Dad called.

I twirled the bird cage and cooed at the bird. Dad slammed the trunk of the Audi with mock anger and I heard him throw my bags on the pavement.

"They're there on the floor. Pick them up."

Jostling a pair of boxes, he passed by me. He set them down on the front door steps and pulled out the keys to open the door, keys jingling in the hole as he pushed it open. I gave one last tap to the bird's cage before shouldering my backpack, which I had set down beside John, and got my bags. Dad was giving a speech about me using that canary as an excuse not to work and about how he'd never take me anywhere again if that's how I was going to be. His voice sounded much too cheery, and so did mine, but I knew we'd work that out. One time, he had almost given up, and his shoulders had sagged in disappointment.

"I can't do it, son. It sounds fake..."

But I had squeezed his hand and told him that it was all right, that I understood. I told him he didn't have to try so hard. At first he remained discouraged, and it seemed as if our whole plan of vacationing in Osaka had been a mistake. But then, slowly at first, and then more gradually, we began to loosen up. Until the day when we both laughed like two jerks at a completely fake editorial concerning Incas.

Staring at one another then we knew we'd be all right, even if we never became as close as we could've been. We both knew the path to recovery would be slow, and it took several weeks after my hospital release before we could talk about Mom freely. And even after that, we still woke up in the middle of the night to hear one another crying. They had been depressing months and I knew more were still to come. But I also knew that we'd come through. I firmly believed we could survive.

I put my bags on the front hall table and began to sort through our mail as I adamantly defended my newly acquired canary. He merely humphed by me and brought in our last bags.

I left him unpacking and cursing souvenirs and much too many brochures as I climbed to my room. I opened the door slowly, preparing mentally for the melancholy I would surely feel.

Dad had left it exactly how it was the day he sent me to boarding school. I winced at the sight. I fully saw, at that moment, what a big loser I had been. The feeling overwhelmed me so much that I spent the rest of the day cleaning out my room. I kept a list of all the beer bottles I found stacked up at the back of the closet door. I underlined the more seriously liquorous drinks with a red marker, statching the bottles I dug out of odd places into boxes I placed high up in the closet.

I was sorting through a dubious collection of punk and psychedelic rock cassettes when I found the boots. White and small, faded and full of cobwebs, buried under shoe boxes and shirts. I took them out slowly, reluctantly, almost reverently. I brushed away the dust and looked at them, turning them over in my hands. I was beginning to see a picture...

Street lamps rushing by. Light glinting off buckles. I gasped, feeling my mind revolving. I could see the car seats in front of me, I could feel the velvet. I knew they had been brown. I used to run my fingers over them and watch them darken in colour. Almost afraid, I followed a mental path up those seats...

She was laughing at something Dad had said. Light shone on her hair, yellow like mine. She was very pretty, and her voice was deep and melodious. She was jokingly refuting something Dad had said.

"But _anata,_ that's the whole point of archaeology: finding new things. You can't help it if you always look in the bug dens. It's just your nature."

Dad had humphed and defended his point stoically. Mom had laughed as turned to me. I remembered how I'd grinned. I always found it so amusing when they talked like that. She would wink at me then. And that time she had something to me.

"Don't listen to your Father on this, son," she'd said, "that's the greatest thing about our work. And the most wonderful thing about life: finding new things. It's even more wonderful when you don't know what you'll find..."

I emerged from my reverie then, too stunned to cry. Slowly, I put the boots on a table and rose.

I went to the window and looked out. I let my head rest against the window panes. The trees swayed softly in the breeze outside. Sunlight dappled the grass and lapped at the fountain in our yard. With sight I never knew I had, I suddenly saw Mom down there. Reading, chasing John, gardening, cleaning the fountain, un-loading the car, opening the gates for Dad, swinging me on her hips, her golden hair shimmering in the sunlight.

I felt a wild sort of ecstasy, a complete peace of mind I had never felt before. Every last trace of my pain began to evaporate. My memories were flowing with a clarity that astonished me. I saw so many things at that one moment that i felt as if I had lived my whole life again in only seconds. Finally, after all this time, I had remembered my Mother.

Suddenly, I was overcome with an immense desire to go downstairs and help Dad turn the house upside down. I wanted to grab our bags and drive off to Osaka again. I knew that this time I'd reach him. That now we would be all right.

I opened the window in one impetuous wave. With the curtains blowing in the wind, I raced down the steps and into the kitchen. Dad was finishing with the numerous drinking cups we'd collected. He stared at me as if I were mad as I came close to him. I kissed his cheek and punched his shoulder playfully, grinning.

"W-what the--?" he blustered.

" _Tousan,_ " I said, "stop putting away those cups and let's go bother the Fudo's. I want to see Akira again, and I'm sure you want to talk to them too. You've got to start thinking about Mexico again, after all...

You haven't forgotten, have you, that the whole point of archaeology is to find new things, and that it's best when you don't know what you'll find?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original A/N:
> 
> This story was written rather quickly, in a 12th grade Creative Writing class. It never saw any revisions, and always remained a first draft. It could benefit from many improvements, but it was written from the heart... So I'm sort of stuck to it. Ha ha.
> 
> I'd like to thank Thania Acarón, for reading this when it was first written and helping with my really, really bad grammar, and Rose Argent, for wanting to read it when I told her about it. Means the world to us starving would-be artists. [laugh]


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